Summer 2017 Patch Notes Discussion

[bbbt]

I personally tend to play more peaceful builder with some specific bouts of warfare, even though I know warfare is the easiest way against the AI.

90% it's because I find unit movement really tedious in civ games (with both 1UPT and frankly also with stacks of doom), and there's a lot of other games I prefer to play for my warmonger fix.

 

[Victoria]

Just playing my first game, the AI is not building many settlers and is instead there are 0 city states left on my continent to check changes there ... lets hope its a one off... also much easier to make friends


first bug, I have no room for a tooth but the deals on the table, just cannot accept. The patch said they would mark such things ?

 

[PhilBowles]

Well, Civ V is a bit anomalous as a game that focused on the tall style as well as escalating science/culture costs, making it more difficult to put more cities into the empire. IV and VI really aren't like that since more cities are better and captured cities can be highly beneficail in yields. In IV, any time you have a key military tech is a good time to war.

As for VI, I had a game where I forced Cleopatra to give up most of my cities and I went from worst in science to top science since it had more than doubled because she had developed campuses.

And of course, the direct benefit of warfare is simple-- denial. Thus, it tends to be the optimal strategy of preventing people from winning, and that to me, is an overriding incentive.

Again my point is mostly about the in-game motivation for war as a strategic tool. "Any time you have a key military tech is a good time to war" is just another case of "war is a good way to play because it's easier than not-war".

I want a game that encompasses the development of civilisation to model war a bit more realistically - not something to either actively avoid or promote, but one that serves specific purposes in particular contexts (such as being useful to obtain a strategic resource or to deny resources to an enemy), not just points towards an overall win condition.

Yes, you get games where you can rapidly boost science with warfare - but on balance funnelling those resources into things other than military units can often be as efficient. Likely you were only worst in science to begin with because you were anticipating taking what you needed and so didn't prioritise it. And once you're already ahead there's no real incentive to deny opponents further resources due to the static nature of Civ gameplay: once you're in the lead by a meaningful margin, you stay in the lead. There aren't any tools other than warfare to allow opponents to catch up, and the AI can't win wars - especially in Civ VI.

That strongly incentivises early war and doesn't incentivise war at any other time - if you take three cities at the start of the game, when it's easiest, you're going to get well ahead of your competitors (hence the early rush strategies that exist) and need never go to war again.

 

[Disgustipated]

LOL I'm at 1050BC and Gandhi tells me Nuclear Weaponry is the future. This is beyond silly Firaxis, I never got this before the patch.

 

[bbbt]

Just playing my first game, the AI is not building many settlers and is instead there are 0 city states left on my continent to check changes there ... lets hope its a one off... also much easier to make friends


first bug, I have no room for a tooth but the deals on the table, just cannot accept. The patch said they would mark such things ?

View attachment 474835

Ugh on the city states - if only liberation bonuses stacked!

I thought the patch notes meant they would mark things the AI would refuse to trade for any offer?

 

[drubell]

In Advanced Options before starting a game you have a toggle to let "Allies share visibility." Was that always there? Is that basically map trading? Because I do like that.

 

[agonistes]

@Victoria

Regarding settlers....

my first thought was that settler farming has just become a national sport.

grabbing 2 or 3 settlers early is going to make/break many an empire.

 

[PhilBowles]

I personally tend to play more peaceful builder with some specific bouts of warfare, even though I know warfare is the easiest way against the AI.

90% it's because I find unit movement really tedious in civ games (with both 1UPT and frankly also with stacks of doom), and there's a lot of other games I prefer to play for my warmonger fix.

Exactly. I do precisely the same - but I'm not very motivated to go to war because once I'm ahead there's little reason for it. Map features like natural wonders are only worth the effort very early, and other resources aren't worth enough. Sometimes you find situations where the map context favours grabbing a particular city because it's placed somewhere the enemy can easily launch attacks, or conversely where you can use it as a choke point, but not all that often and frankly the Civ VI AI is so much worse at warfare even than Civ V's that it's hardly relevant.

 

[Civbra]

I'm the only one who can't start a game....the menu screen shows nothing to me!

 

[tekjunkie28]

Does the game seem to be using less CPU usage?

 

[Photi]

In Advanced Options before starting a game you have a toggle to let "Allies share visibility." Was that always there? Is that basically map trading? Because I do like that.

yes that's been there since at least the last patch

 

[Chibisuke]

Increase cost of archer is good for player on deity level. AI has been spamming archers since they changed AI behavior to favor them. This will slow down that and allow players to more easily rush AI cities early.

 

[V. Soma]

I'm the only one who can't start a game....the menu screen shows nothing to me!

Unsubscribe NQ EUI mod in Steam

 

[Katakanja]

Is that a real concern? I haven't played for a long time, but in my experience the AI would declare war at the start of the game and, once defeated, would rarely if ever declare war again.

I have Victoria and Gorgo on my continent with me as Nubia, I had them jointly declare war, I beat them back but their cities were too far away for me to feel like it was worthwhile to conquer them, so I made peace. The moment the peace treaty expired, Victoria declared war a second time. I can't say I've seen them behave so trigger happy before, particularly when I haven't been aggressively warmongering and have no warmongering points to make them mad at me.

Could it also mean they're more likely to Levy a CS's military during war?

Has anyone seen the AI ever do that before? Hell, I'VE never felt the need to do that before It would certainly be interesting if they started using that as a tactic to harass the player.

instead there are 0 city states left on my continent

Yes, I've noticed at least three or four "an unmet player has been defeated" messages in my 130 turns so far, and they haven't been other civs, so the AI appears to have a new city-state conquering hobby.

Does the game seem to be using less CPU usage?

I can't speak to specifics, but it does appear that they have done some kind of optimization pass, things are running a little bit smoother and quicker for me.

 

[Kyro]

Finally a restart button and saving of configurations. That's great.
Making AI smarter. What's not to like?

The rest:

• When you liberate a city-state your military units are only kicked back from the first ring of hexes around the city; you aren't ejected from their territory entirely.

What is the reasoning behind pushing military units out in the first place? Why fix half of it when the whole thing is just nonsensical?

• Reduced cost of all other districts by 10%
• Increased costs of district buildings by 10% (except Aerodrome buildings), and increased per settler cost bump by 50%

This "give and take" approach to game design is heavily flawed and really gets on my nerves. So you reduced costs of Districts by a mere 10%. That would have been good by itself. Then you offset it by making all buildings more expensive, by 10%. Where is the buff in that? You're just back to square one essentially in terms of production costs; which is the crux of the general dissatisfaction. What is the point? To mislead players into thinking Districts costs are cheaper now when essentially nothing has really changed?

Oh, and you made settlers more expensive. Really? You have any idea how much more this will encourage war? Correction, this simply proves that the Developers want to encourage war. It wasn't done out of ignorance, but with the direct knowledge and specific purpose that it will force players to go to war.

Oh, and warmongering is more profitable than ever thanks to increased settler costs. Thanks but no thanks.

Nothing done about the terrible pace of game.

Nothing done about weak great people.

Nothing done about weak Wonders, except Hanging Gardens; which is still weak.

In summary, nothing done to equate power of Civilization Building to Civilization Conquering, in fact that gap has been further widened.

 

[Abraxis]

Finally a restart button and saving of configurations. That's great.
Making AI smarter. What's not to like?

The rest:

• When you liberate a city-state your military units are only kicked back from the first ring of hexes around the city; you aren't ejected from their territory entirely.

What is the reasoning behind pushing military units out in the first place? Why fix half of it when the whole thing is just nonsensical?

• Reduced cost of all other districts by 10%
• Increased costs of district buildings by 10% (except Aerodrome buildings), and increased per settler cost bump by 50%

This "give and take" approach to game design is heavily flawed and really gets on my nerves. So you reduced costs of Districts by a mere 10%. That would have been good by itself. Then you offset it by making all buildings more expensive, by 10%. Where is the buff in that? You're just back to square one essentially in terms of production costs; which is the crux of the general dissatisfaction. What is the point? To mislead players into thinking Districts costs are cheaper now when essentially nothing has really changed?

Oh, and you made settlers more expensive. Really? You have any idea how much more this will encourage war? Correction, this simply proves that the Developers want to encourage war. It wasn't done out of ignorance, but with the direct knowledge and specific purpose that it will force players to go to war.

Oh, and warmongering is more profitable than ever thanks to increased settler costs. Thanks but no thanks.

District cost has modifiers all over the game, district buildings do not. 10% from one to the other does not break even at all. This effectively controls the potency of all the modifiers, in this case, lowering their value while keeping the overall investment toward development similar.
Effectively It's a step toward removing disparity in development costs from one civ to another which harms anyone with bonuses to districts, and reduces the "Catch-up" mechanics in place to help out smaller civs while penalizing more powerful civs less.

I would guess there are also significantly more hammers put in to buildings than districts, so 10% increase to buildings actually means significantly more hammers than the 10% reduction to districts means hammers saved.

ALLLLLso consider buildings can be bought with gold and districts cannot. 10% from one to the other effects high gold producers, in this case providing them with a larger share of infrastructure they can buy out than they could previously.
This also indirectly increases the value of gold globally.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Again my point is mostly about the in-game motivation for war as a strategic tool. "Any time you have a key military tech is a good time to war" is just another case of "war is a good way to play because it's easier than not-war".

Funny, because that is how I view a lot of "peaceful" victories which are really domination victories but to save time.

And strategy is about picking the best choices. When one choice is too dominant, then it invariably limits the gameplay.

I want a game that encompasses the development of civilisation to model war a bit more realistically - not something to either actively avoid or promote, but one that serves specific purposes in particular contexts (such as being useful to obtain a strategic resource or to deny resources to an enemy), not just points towards an overall win condition.

It is true that in 6, I haven't seen a need for that. In 4 where various resources like oil were scarce, there was but honestly I found that even more annoying since that led to even more war and imbalance.

Yes, you get games where you can rapidly boost science with warfare - but on balance funnelling those resources into things other than military units can often be as efficient. Likely you were only worst in science to begin with because you were anticipating taking what you needed and so didn't prioritise it. And once you're already ahead there's no real incentive to deny opponents further resources due to the static nature of Civ gameplay: once you're in the lead by a meaningful margin, you stay in the lead. There aren't any tools other than warfare to allow opponents to catch up, and the AI can't win wars - especially in Civ VI.

Backdoor religous victories and sometimes culture can be a threat.

That strongly incentivises early war and doesn't incentivise war at any other time - if you take three cities at the start of the game, when it's easiest, you're going to get well ahead of your competitors (hence the early rush strategies that exist) and need never go to war again.

Well, that is highly situational, but yes early game makes for a snowball effect. That applies to everything. I see that as mostly unavoidable but maybe if the ai could properly defend itself....

 

[Nikolai II]

I'm the only one who can't start a game....the menu screen shows nothing to me!

Disable all mods, some mods are breaking the game from what I hear. They need to be updated.

 

[PhilBowles]

Reduced cost of all other districts by 10%

• Increased costs of district buildings by 10% (except Aerodrome buildings), and increased per settler cost bump by 50%

This "give and take" approach to game design is heavily flawed and really gets on my nerves. So you reduced costs of Districts by a mere 10%. That would have been good by itself. Then you offset it by making all buildings more expensive, by 10%. Where is the buff in that? You're just back to square one essentially in terms of production costs; which is the crux of the general dissatisfaction. What is the point? To mislead players into thinking Districts costs are cheaper now when essentially nothing has really changed?

The major point of districts is GP points and placement adjacency bonuses - this change seems real enough. Evidently the cost increase for buidlings reflects Firaxis considering that the overall building cost is appropriate.

Oh, and you made settlers more expensive. Really? You have any idea how much more this will encourage war? Correction, this simply proves that the Developers want to encourage war. It wasn't done out of ignorance, but with the direct knowledge and specific purpose that it will force players to go to war.

At the end of the day, Civ is fundamentally a wargame first and a builder game second - it always has been. It's not good at promoting warfare as a strategic tool, but war has always been the major way to win and to interact with other players. Things like the settler change can be criticised on the grounds of such things as indirectly making the game easier by over-rewarding settler stealing, but you can't reasonably frame an argument around an objection to a wargame promoting warfare - that's much like Total War players who complain the game's too war-focused (and yes, those exist too).

 

[Archon_Wing]

District cost has modifiers all over the game, district buildings do not. 10% from one to the other does not break even at all. This effectively controls the potency of all the modifiers, in this case, lowering their value while keeping the overall investment toward development similar.
Effectively It's a step toward removing disparity in development costs from one civ to another which harms anyone with bonuses to districts, and reduces the "Catch-up" mechanics in place to help out smaller civs while penalizing more powerful civs less.

I would guess there are also significantly more hammers put in to buildings than districts, so 10% increase to buildings actually means significantly more hammers than the 10% reduction to districts means hammers saved.

Also, you can buy buildings, but you can't buy districts. This makes it easier to set up late cities.